The Earth is Singing - Review

Author: Vanessa Curtis

Title: The Earth is Singing

Publisher: Usborne

Published: January 2015

Based on the true story of the Jews of Riga, ‘The Earth is Singing’ is author, Vanessa Curtis’, captivating song of love, loss and survival written to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Holocaust Memorial Day.

The Nazis have invaded Latvia and overthrown the Soviet Union and what starts as hope of liberation for the nation becomes a brutal new world for any Latvian Jew. Told through the innocent eyes of fifteen year old Hanna Michelson, her memory of a warm life living with her Jewish family where she aspires to become a dancer is slowly starting to crumble piece by piece to unveil a harsh new cold reality where the only objective is to survive.

Hanna lives with her protective mother and feisty grandmother while longing for her father to return after he was taken away. The growing restrictions have made seeing her boyfriend Uldis hard and the threat of moving to the ghetto with 30,000 other Jews looms over her family’s head.

Award-winning author, Vanessa Curtis, has retold a harrowing tale through a beautifully written story. Hanna, at times, can come across as quite naive to the growing horrors occurring around her but ‘The Earth is Singing’ contains a sense of disheartening inevitability for the characters, which is dramatized even more by Hanna’s innocence. Her and her family undergo a series of transpiring events that pull you in to share in their hope that they make the right choices to continue living.